<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>if you must live (if you must die) by néohs (bangin_patchouli)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046310">if you must live (if you must die)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangin_patchouli/pseuds/n%C3%A9ohs'>néohs (bangin_patchouli)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stray Kids (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Bad Ending, ChanLix, Character Death, Heavy Angst, I'll add more tags if I think of any, I'm so sorry for this, M/M, Pain, Post-Apocalypse, Sad Ending, Unhappy Ending, Zombie Apocalypse, i only know pain, im So sorry chanlix, so much pain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:22:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046310</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangin_patchouli/pseuds/n%C3%A9ohs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"My body is cold. I'm not in it anymore."</p>
<p>"But if I keep holding you, I can keep you warm."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the thing Chan has spent so long preventing from happening, happens. Post-apocalyptic, extremely sad.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bang Chan/Lee Felix</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if you must live (if you must die)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresh96/gifts">fresh96</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i wrote this in one sitting because im deranged and unbearably sad major character death fics are my comfort zone. so sorry if you read this we can go to therapy together. hope it did enough damage for you annika</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>        “Chan, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        Ever since the world ended, Chan has liked the sunrise. The chemicals in the air send the light prisms askew, they scatter differently and create colors he’d never seen in the sky before. From the shattered window of the shack of a destroyed home they’d been staying in, he found repose in watching the sun peak through the wreckage of concrete and metal over the far line of the city. It would bend in pinks and pale oranges, painting the dirt rosy and twisting into the metal so it looked iridescent, and he would fuse the warmth of it with the heat coming from Felix’s body under his arm. He had always liked to watch Felix sleep, before all of this. He’s always been pretty, like an angel, even now with speckles of dirt on his face and a constant, vague expression of fear. Still an angel.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        “What do you mean, babe?” Chan says, wiping a rag down the smooth metal of the barrel in his hand. The grease sticks to his fingers, making them black and slick.</p>
<p>        “I’m sorry,” Felix says again, and Chan finally looks to him, chest beginning to pound. There’s been a lot of that lately; heart pounding, adrenaline racing. But when he sees Felix, really sees him, his heart drops into the soles of his boots. He drops the barrel onto the table, at Felix’s side before he can take a breath.</p>
<p>        “What’s wrong?” Chan asks, voice a breath past his lips. He runs his hands down Felix’s arms, pulling away his collar to check his neck and shoulders. His skin is clean there, if not dirty and sheened in sweat. He looks to Felix, jaw aching as he clenches his teeth. Felix’s eyes are wider than the moon, half crescents of purple staining his skin below them. He looks so tired.</p>
<p>        “Please, baby. What happened?”</p>
<p>        “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I don’t know, Chan, it was so fast,” Felix mumbles, words falling out of his mouth just as his eyes begin to water. He brings a trembling hand up to clutch at Chan’s shirt front. Chan pulls at his arms, he’s taking over, he always does. He pulls Felix with him and sits him down in the creaky wooden dinner table chair. It was the only one in the house when they found it. He kneels before Felix, hands gentle on his knees and putting all his energy into keeping his face calm, for Felix.</p>
<p>        “Tell me what happened,” Chan says, and Felix’s lip twitches. “I won’t be mad at you. I promise.”</p>
<p>        Felix slowly raises his hands from his sides to the hem of his shirt, and Chan’s veins are burning with a cocktail of fear and adrenaline. As Felix pulls his shirt up, Chan sees everything he’s feared ever since the beginning, everything he’s tried so hard to prevent. A nasty, angry circle of teeth marks colored in vivid reds and purples adorns Felix’s stomach, crusted blood and dirt stuck to his skin. Blood is still swelling feebly from where the bite penetrated his skin, bubbling weakly out onto the rest of it, and Chan knows it’s over. Something in him knew it was over the moment Felix’s first said <em>I’m sorry</em>, there was something final in the sound of his voice, but now that <em>the end</em> is staring him right in the face, baring its grotesque black teeth, he knows it’s really over. He slowly looks back to Felix.</p>
<p>        Full, fat tears are streaming down his cheeks now, leaving trails in the faint sheen of dirt in their wake, and the look in his eyes shoots the most painful pang of <em>hurt</em> into Chan’s chest that he’s ever felt.</p>
<p>        “Chan, I didn’t mean to, I-”</p>
<p>“Hey, hey,” Chan quiets him, hates to hear the breakage of Felix’s voice before it can even leave his throat. He brings a soft hand up to Felix’s cheek, brushing the tears away with the pad of his thumb. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay, baby. I promise, okay? I promise.”</p>
<p>        Felix crashes into him, full weight against Chan’s chest and his arms thrown over his shoulders. He twists hard fingers into the fabric of Chan’s shirt, and careful of his waist, Chan holds him just as tightly. Like he can protect him from this now. Like he hadn’t failed already.</p>
<p>        He can feel the silent sobs permeating through Felix’s body.</p>
<p>        “I’m so sorry,” he cried into Chan’s neck.</p>
<p>        Chan doesn’t have the words to match. He runs a hand down Felix’s back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        Chan never thought that he’d see what a bite does to somebody. Not to Felix. Felix started to tremble, at some point. Not only from the fear, but as if his body were trying to turn itself inside out. Maybe it is, the virus eating the inner lining of his skin, bleeding into his organs and burrowing inside them. He had turned white as a sheet, too, balled up on the moth infested couch with a cold layer of sweat covering his skin. He had watched the sun go down through the window, and Chan had watched him, a pulsing ache in his chest. His brain was not being kind; he knew that it would be Felix’s last sunset, but it seemed to want to remind him so with every slow blink of Felix’s beautiful brown eyes.</p>
<p>        Just as the moon comes into view, painting the sky cold and white, Felix makes a sound like he’s choking. Chan all but leaps from his station on the corner of the table to kneel in front of Felix, who’s grabbing at his own chest, eyes screwed shut as he coughs up what sounds like it could be his entire lung. When he looks to Chan through sweat soaked bangs, there’s a thin stream of blood tricking from the corner of his mouth.</p>
<p>        “Water,” he breathes, hand coming to clutch Chan’s shoulder. Chan nods, gone and back in a second, their canteen in his hand. It’s barely full, but Felix takes a harrowingly small sip; Chan hears it drag down his throat.</p>
<p>        “Better?” Chan asks quietly, brushing back Felix’s bangs, now allowing the clench in his heart show on his face when Felix lets his face fall into Chan’s palm. He nods into it, eyes fluttering shut.</p>
<p>        “Will you sit with me?” Felix says, voice a mere push of air.</p>
<p>        “Of course, sweetheart, anything,” Chan says.</p>
<p>        He comes to sit beside Felix. Felix tries, Chan feels the struggle in the quiver of his muscles, to get closer, but he can hardly move. An unbearable sorrow leaks into Chan’s bones, and he gathers Felix into his arms, that belated protection overtaking him once again. Felix makes the choking noise again, like the blood in his throat is attacking the words he’s trying to say. Chan waits with undying patience until Felix can brings the words to his lips.</p>
<p>        “Can you sing to me?”</p>
<p>        Chan feels like acid has been poured down his throat, burning the lining.</p>
<p>        "Whatever you want,” he whispers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        Chan knows the moon is overhead the house when he feels Felix stir. He stays still, tries to imagine that it’s not because of the pain, or the bite, or the fact that Felix is dying. This is the last time they will sit on this couch together. He wonders who it belonged to before.</p>
<p>        Chan feels Felix’s hair tickle his chin as he lifts his head.</p>
<p>        “What is it, baby?” he asks, brushing his fingers through the hair at Felix’s nape.</p>
<p>        “It’s probably late,” Felix whispers, dropping his head back into Chan’s neck. Chan hums and rubs his palm down Felix’s back.</p>
<p>        “Probably around eleven,” he replies.</p>
<p>        “Can we… go to bed?” Felix asks.</p>
<p>        “Sure.”</p>
<p>        Chan collects Felix’s into his arms, hooking an elbow under his knees and holding him close against his chest. Felix can barely sling his arms around Chan’s shoulders, and Chan tries not to think about how lifeless his body feels agains his own.</p>
<p>        He carries Felix slowly to the bedroom, where the linens somehow remained through all of the war and devastation. The moon light seeps in and pools on the white of the sheets, and Chan carefully lies Felix down where the shape of his body has made its place over all the nights spent there. He settles lightly next to him and places himself as a buffer to Felix’s shivers.</p>
<p>        Felix looks up to him, eyes sadder than Chan has ever seen them, and Chan swallows the salt in his throat.</p>
<p>        “You have to look out for me,” Felix murmurs, voice hoarse and scratchy. Chan feels panic thrum through him for a moment before he can remember what is sounded like before. Deep, and made of honey.</p>
<p>        “I’ll always look out for you, baby,” he says softly, stroking Felix’s cheek. Felix’s head is pillowed on Chan’s arm; the bed only had one pillow when they found it. He leans down to press his lips to Felix’s forehead.</p>
<p>        “No, Chan.. I mean, in case I… while we’re asleep.”</p>
<p>        Chan forces the muscles in his face to form a smile, a kind one, aimed down at Felix.</p>
<p>        “Don’t worry, ‘Lix,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry about that. You should go to sleep, yeah? We have to get up early to make a supply run tomorrow, remember?”</p>
<p>        Felix won’t make it to that supply run tomorrow. Chan pretends he will anyway.</p>
<p>        “Okay,” Felix sighs, and Chan relishes in the expanding and shrinking of Felix’s lungs pressing against his.</p>
<p>        “Get some sleep. I’m right here.”</p>
<p>        The night ticks by in hours that feel like seconds, and Chan doesn’t blink, scared he’ll lose the image of Felix in his arms when he closes his eyes. His hair, long with dark brown roots that grew out down to his ears since everything ended, falls over his face in his sleep. His nose, like a little pink button at the tip, with the freckle that sprinkle over it and onto his cheeks, overtop the rosy tint his skin has always had. His eyelashes lie in rest just below his eyelids, pretty and long. He curls closer into Chan as more time passes, and Chan doesn’t breathe for fear of Felix dissipating into thin air at the slightest movement. The only sound is the gentle wind outside and the muted drip of every tear onto the fabric below them from the rim of Chan’s eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        For the first time in forever, the morning is harsh. It’s mean, with its pretty pinks and smooth oranges as they paint the city again, but Chan still watches it through the window. Its light mingles into Felix’s hair, highlighting it in colors that Felix used to dye it, when he thought he was going to be a dance major at the academy and Chan thought they were going to get married on the beach, ocean water dampening the ankles of their jeans.</p>
<p>        Chan doesn’t wake up because he never went to sleep, but he feels when Felix begins to stir. He buries his head farther into Chan’s arm at first, then splays a pale hand onto Chan’s chest. He looks up, and past the sheen and the dried tears mixed with dirt, Chan realizes that the sunrise never compared. It never even came close.</p>
<p>        “You’re awake,” Felix says, groggy and sleep stained, and Chan can pretend it’s yesterday.</p>
<p>        “Yeah,” is all he says.</p>
<p>        “Let’s go watch the sunrise.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        There’s a rickety porch swing out front, leaned partially against the panelling, and Chan brings Felix to it, hates the way he shivers against the morning breeze he used to love. Against Chan’s chest lain compactly over his lap, Felix goes to lift up the bottom of his shirt. Chan catches his hand before he can, bringing the loose fist to his cheek.</p>
<p>        “Don’t look at it,” he says. “It’s okay.”</p>
<p>        Felix only shivers against him. Chan can’t tell how much time passes, but the sun kisses the top of the old paper office now. It’s all still pink, and Chan recalls the time, must be a year ago, when he and Felix brought frozen peanut butter jelly sandwiches to the top of it. It had been covered in debris, but they had still laid down on the ground to watch the planes that no longer flew across the sky.</p>
<p>        “My body is cold,” Felix says into the silence. He’s looking out across the road to something Chan doesn’t see, and Chan’s chest tightens impossibly more-so. Felix is practically melting in his arms, but he doesn’t say so.</p>
<p>        “I’d say fall is coming then,” he says instead.</p>
<p>        “I’m not in it anymore,” Felix breathes, and Chan hates to know what he means. Hates that he’s right. Felix might as well have left his body the moment the nukes hit the ground. Now, the virus courses through it like it took him hostage and shot him, tied to a chair, and the blood is on Chan’s hands.</p>
<p>        “But if I keep holding you, I can keep you warm,” Chan whispers. <em>Keep you here</em>.</p>
<p>        “You have to-,” Felix turns to face him, spreading his fingers out over Chan’s cheek. “You have to keep going. Once I’m gone.”</p>
<p>        “Felix, I-”</p>
<p>        “Please,” Felix begs. “You have to. You can make it. And when I-”</p>
<p>        Tears stream now silently and unendingly down Felix’s face, dripping down off of his jaw.</p>
<p>        “When I see you again,” Felix whimpers, and the sound sends a hairline fracture straight down the center of Chan’s already broken heart. “When I see you again, everything’ll be just fine.”</p>
<p>        Chan’s pistol beckons to him from his side, and Chan would rather go to Hell with the devil.</p>
<p>        “I love you,” he whispers, forehead against Felix’s. “More than anything, I love you.”</p>
<p>        “I love you, too, so much. And it has been an <em>honor</em>, that I met you. That I got to love you,” Felix says, and Chan can hear his heart in his throat, spilling its contents into the words off his lips. Chan captures them before they can disappear into the air, pressing his mouth to Felix’s. His lips are warm still.</p>
<p>        Every scene of <em>them </em>plays out in Chan’s mind in double time, moments flashing before his eyes. He holds onto them like if he lets them go, the air would follow them right out of his lungs. Felix, the one that’s in his arms now, shudders and clutches at Chan’s shoulders.</p>
<p>        “I’m scared, Chan,” he says. “I can feel it, I’m scared. Please.”</p>
<p>        “It’s okay, baby, it’s alright,” Chan says through gritted molars. “I’m right here.”</p>
<p>        “I can’t do it, I can’t,” Felix breathes out, air shallowed, and Chan runs a hand down the side of his face. His heart is thundering in his chest.</p>
<p>        “I’ll do it, baby. Don’t worry, okay?” he says. “Close your eyes, ‘Lix. Just close your eyes. I’ll make it go away.”</p>
<p>        “You’ll be here when I wake up?” Felix asks, eyes big and beautiful and <em>God</em>, Chan’s bones break all at once, searing pain attacking his insides. He smiles gently, eyes on fire.</p>
<p>        “Of course I will.”</p>
<p>        “Okay. I love you, Chan. I love you.”</p>
<p>        “I love you, too, Felix. Always.”</p>
<p>        Felix closes his eyes and rests his head onto Chan’s chest. His pistol feels like a ton of metal in his hand, a freight train speeding toward them before they can get out of the way. The shot rings harshly in his ears, and he feels all the life drain out of the universe as it collapses.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>        Ever since the world ended, Chan had liked the sunrise, pinks and oranges blending over the empty city in front of their house. He had liked to watch it through the window and feel the warmth of it wash over his skin. Now, as the sun shines in through the shattered glass, Chan can only pretend for a few seconds that its heat is Felix’s, where he isn’t pressed up against his body. He opens his eyes, rips his chest in two, and knows that he hates the sunrise more than anything else.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i don’t think i'll ever stop apologizing, my fics just get sadder the older i get</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>